Czeching in, part deux
(A note - there are all sorts of important characters on this godforsaken keyboard that I can't access, so bear that in mind.) Ok, so, Poland. The fest in Gdansk was fun, though we spent the whole weekend surrounded by a coterie of drunken Poles. Before we left for Olsztyn, we took about an hour to walk around the old city. I'm glad we did, because it was fantastic--the coolest looking city we've seen so far. I have pictures that, obviously, I can't share with you right now. Gdansk is on the northern coast of Poland on the Baltic Sea. We didn't get a view of open water, but we did walk along a harbor. Used to be a German city called Danzig, and there's an obviously Germanic slant to the architecture. Walked around a cool church, snapped a pic of the oldest house in Gdansk (1541), got briefly separated from my crew in a crowded area. Good times.
Olsztyn was not the type of place I would have thought we would play in a punk bar called the Molotov Cafe. Like, not just the kind of place where people with leather clothing hang out, but actually run by punks. We played with The Assassinators, a Copenhagen band we had played with the day before (melodic d-beat punk with harmonized female vocals, good stuff), a really good local band called Utopie, and a French ska band who played foreeeeever. The bar is in the old town part of the city which was quaint and scenic. It didn't lend itself to any one or two particular camera shots, so just take my word about quaint and scenic.
The drives from Gdansk to Olsztyn and then from Olsztyn to Berlin provided a much different veiw of the Polish landscape than what we had encountered on our drive into the country. We passed through beautiful rustic countryside, which was complemented by some of the best weather we'd seen to that point. The drive to Berlin was something like 12 hours. We thought we were going to be there really late, but we rolled into the Kopi around 10pm and were told we were the first band to arrive. The Kopi is a huge, long-running Berlin squat named after its place on Kopinicker Strasse. It features five or six stories of living quarters plus two show spaces--one with a big stage and a capacity of multiple hundreds, and a more intimate space called Koma F where we played. The building was recently bought and there has been talk of eviction, so punks all over the continent have been preparing for a battle a la Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen. I did hear though that the residents of the Kopi had been in talks with the new owner and were likely going to avoid confrontation by paying some nominal rent.
Inside, I immediately felt the effects of the mold and mildew that saturate the building, and the back of the stage (where I got to play) was incredibly dank. Can't imagine living there. That being said, the people were great, and our dinner that night and our breakfast the next morning were two of the best meals of tour. As it turned out, neither of the other bands who were scheduled to play showed up. At the request of the booker, since people had showed up and payed to see three bands, we played our set a second time after a 20 minute break. It felt a little silly, but it was fun, and the crowd was even more into it the second time around. We sold more merch at that show than at any other, including the fests. (Which is not to say a lot--we will be bringing many shirts and records back with us.)
We hit a couple of record stores in the eastern part of the city the next day before heading to Potsdam. The public transportation in Berlin operates on the honor system: you're supposed to buy a ticket, but you can get on without one. Forrest was travelling around the city separately with a couple friends and got busted on a bus without a ticket. He got fined a cool 40 euros in an incident he insists on referring to as a "Stasi attack." Potsdam is just outside Berlin, so we had a short drive. We played in a illegal-turned-legal squat called Archiv which has been around since 1994, two years fewer than the Kopi. We played with just one other band, and not many people showed up, but the guy who booked the showed was really great. He told us about the bike tour he had taken last year, which involved cycling around Europe for a few months and then heading down to Africa. He started to do Africa with his cousin, but after his cousin's bike lost a game of chicken with a brakeless truck (cousin had jumped off in time), he decided to go on himself. He spent four months biking down to Gabon by himself. Which is insane. He got malaria four times, once nearly fatally. He talked about having to travel only at night in the hottest parts, and how it would sometimes be too hot to mend a flat because the patch glue wouldn't set. One day he covered only about 10 miles because he had to carry his bike over sand the whole way. Super impressive.
We're about to leave Brno for Ostravice, so I have to leave it at that for now. More later. Hope you're all well.
Olsztyn was not the type of place I would have thought we would play in a punk bar called the Molotov Cafe. Like, not just the kind of place where people with leather clothing hang out, but actually run by punks. We played with The Assassinators, a Copenhagen band we had played with the day before (melodic d-beat punk with harmonized female vocals, good stuff), a really good local band called Utopie, and a French ska band who played foreeeeever. The bar is in the old town part of the city which was quaint and scenic. It didn't lend itself to any one or two particular camera shots, so just take my word about quaint and scenic.
The drives from Gdansk to Olsztyn and then from Olsztyn to Berlin provided a much different veiw of the Polish landscape than what we had encountered on our drive into the country. We passed through beautiful rustic countryside, which was complemented by some of the best weather we'd seen to that point. The drive to Berlin was something like 12 hours. We thought we were going to be there really late, but we rolled into the Kopi around 10pm and were told we were the first band to arrive. The Kopi is a huge, long-running Berlin squat named after its place on Kopinicker Strasse. It features five or six stories of living quarters plus two show spaces--one with a big stage and a capacity of multiple hundreds, and a more intimate space called Koma F where we played. The building was recently bought and there has been talk of eviction, so punks all over the continent have been preparing for a battle a la Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen. I did hear though that the residents of the Kopi had been in talks with the new owner and were likely going to avoid confrontation by paying some nominal rent.
Inside, I immediately felt the effects of the mold and mildew that saturate the building, and the back of the stage (where I got to play) was incredibly dank. Can't imagine living there. That being said, the people were great, and our dinner that night and our breakfast the next morning were two of the best meals of tour. As it turned out, neither of the other bands who were scheduled to play showed up. At the request of the booker, since people had showed up and payed to see three bands, we played our set a second time after a 20 minute break. It felt a little silly, but it was fun, and the crowd was even more into it the second time around. We sold more merch at that show than at any other, including the fests. (Which is not to say a lot--we will be bringing many shirts and records back with us.)
We hit a couple of record stores in the eastern part of the city the next day before heading to Potsdam. The public transportation in Berlin operates on the honor system: you're supposed to buy a ticket, but you can get on without one. Forrest was travelling around the city separately with a couple friends and got busted on a bus without a ticket. He got fined a cool 40 euros in an incident he insists on referring to as a "Stasi attack." Potsdam is just outside Berlin, so we had a short drive. We played in a illegal-turned-legal squat called Archiv which has been around since 1994, two years fewer than the Kopi. We played with just one other band, and not many people showed up, but the guy who booked the showed was really great. He told us about the bike tour he had taken last year, which involved cycling around Europe for a few months and then heading down to Africa. He started to do Africa with his cousin, but after his cousin's bike lost a game of chicken with a brakeless truck (cousin had jumped off in time), he decided to go on himself. He spent four months biking down to Gabon by himself. Which is insane. He got malaria four times, once nearly fatally. He talked about having to travel only at night in the hottest parts, and how it would sometimes be too hot to mend a flat because the patch glue wouldn't set. One day he covered only about 10 miles because he had to carry his bike over sand the whole way. Super impressive.
We're about to leave Brno for Ostravice, so I have to leave it at that for now. More later. Hope you're all well.
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